Wednesday 26 November 2008

Speaker: Helen Caines   (Yale)

Title: Using hot quarks to examine the quark-gluon-plasma

Abstract: Results from experiments at RHIC have presented clear evidence that a strongly coupled medium
is formed in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies. Strong support for this claim
comes from results of di-hadron correlations. Namely, the associated jet-like hadron yield 180 degrees
away in azimuth from a high pT trigger hadron is strongly suppressed in heavy ion collisions, as opposed
to d+Au collisions which show an associated "Jet" yield similar to that from p+p. These two facts indicate
that the suppression is a result of a scattered high momentum parton losing energy in the hot and dense
medium. I will discuss further details of these analyses and how they are being used to provide details
about properties of the medium produced at RHIC.